An Artificial Intelligence educator has urged deeper thought into the moral considerations of breakthroughs in the field of robotics.

Speaking at the World Government Summit about whether robots could rule the world, Neil Jacobstein, co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at the Singularity University, said: “Sustainable Artificial Intelligence requires maths, and ecological and ethical literacy.”

Jacobstein warned that succeeding in creating super intelligence could solve very hard problems, but could also suffer negative unintended consequences.

He said AI’s potential “expands the range of possible” with a tremendous value including augmentation of human skills, improving prediction accuracy, solving complex problems quickly, improving product and service costs, and managing corporate task and domain knowledge.

“[But] we are morally responsible for our inventions. We are going to need advanced R&D, specification, security, validity and control,” Jacobstein stressed.

The expert sees AI’s biggest potential in the possibility of robots providing free high quality education.

He explained: “AI is going to blow the roof off of education with one tutor per child or adult learner. It can change balance of power between small companies and big companies, and small countries and big countries.”